Arthur Boyd Portraits, National Portrait Gallery Arthur Boyd Portraits Thursday 11 November until Sunday 3 October 1999 This is the first in a series of National Portrait Gallery exhibitions to survey the portraits painted by artists who are not thought of, primarily, as portrait painters. Arthur Boyd was such an artist. He is known principally for his mythological subjects and landscapes, and for works which reveal deep human truths. He did not consider himself to be a portrait painter, and in comparison with the total number of his works, the number of portraits is comparatively small. But amongst this small group of works are some powerful and inspired depictions of people. This is the first in a series of National Portrait Gallery exhibitions to survey the portraits painted by artists who are not thought of, primarily, as portrait painters. Arthur Boyd was such an artist. He is known principally for his mythological subjects and landscapes, and for works which reveal deep human truths. He did not consider himself to be a portrait painter, and in comparison with the total number of his works, the number of portraits is comparatively small. But amongst this small group of works are some powerful and inspired depictions of people.

The earliest portraits set a theme which remained constant throughout Boyd’s career – the preference for subjects drawn from his immediate circle, his family and friends.He began with his parents, Doris and Merric Boyd, with his brothers and sister, and with self-portraits – direct, relaxed sketches painted when the artist was in his mid teens. These paintings are at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum to the extended engagements with the ghosts of his early life which were the subjects of Boyd’s paintings of the late 1960s. The exhibition includes an example of this later series – the sombre Interior with potter and model 1969, painted a decade after the death of his parents, is an imaginative reconstruction of the often fraught personal dynamics of the artist’s early life. Unlike the benign and relaxed mood of the mid-1930s paintings, Boyd’s work of the late 1930s is tense and expressive. A source of inspiration during this experimental painting period is often cited as the work of his fellow Melbourne artists, in particular, the Jewish refugee Yosl Bergner, a painter of moody streetscapes who was a devotee of European expressionism.

Boyd’s vigorous Laughing head 1938 certainly suggests the example of such European expressionist painters as Georges Rouault and Oskar Kokoschka. In this exhibition Laughing head is paired with a work not previously shown, Nude and three heads 1939, a painting in which Boyd departed from the naturalistic colour of his earlier portraits. Neither of these works is a direct portrait (although the face in the upper corner of Nude and three heads is unmistakably a self-portrait), yet the paintings of this time embody some deep humanistic quality, tinged with a kind of brutal directness. They also suggest stories. Nude and three heads relates to a painting of 1938, Three heads, in which, according to the historian Ursula Hoff, the three Boyd brothers impersonate the characters in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. The portrait of Barbara Hockey of 1938 has been interpreted by the same historian as taking illness (a Dostoevskian theme) as its subject.

While a student at Melbourne University, Hockey had been confined to bed with tuberculosis, which accounts for the subject’s feverish and haggard look so appropriate to Boyd’s mood of heightened expressiveness. The self-portrait reappears throughout Boyd’s work. Sometimes, as in one of the earliest paintings included here and in the masterly etching of 1962—63, these are relatively straightforward, albeit intensely searching self-portraits. Boyd’s archetypal depictions of the artist in the paintings of the early 1970s – tormented by beasts, grasping at heaps of gold, caged and chained – can also be read as self-portraits. But these later works are to be regarded more as meditations on a generalised condition of the artist than as self-portraits proper. The 1945—46 Self-portrait is a powerfully realised work, one of the great twentieth-century Australian self-portraits. It is an iconic work among Boyd’s portraits of the mid-1940s.

Characteristically, these are paintings of the family and of the wider circle of the pottery at Murrumbeena, Melbourne, which Boyd set up with John Perceval and Peter Herbst in 1944. There is a photograph by Albert Tucker which shows the artist with the recently completed self-portrait. It captures the sense of the shared creative environment in which the 1940s portraits were painted. Many of the subjects of the portraits of the late 1940s were involved in the pottery: Carl Cooper, subject of two major portraits; Valerie Petschack, who married Peter Herbst; Tim and Betty Burstall. Other subjects were students and writers: Max Nicholson, an English student at Melbourne University and a family friend since 1934; the actor Max Dunn; the poet Frank Kellaway; and picture-framer Martin Smith. Betty Burstall worked at the pottery from time to time. Her face, surrounded by a mass of curly dark hair, was the ideal model for Boyd’s paintings on biblical themes and his decorated ceramics.

This exhibition includes the intense head of Betty Burstall painted in 1945 as well as a decorated bowl in which her face appears transformed into that of an angel, surrounded by exuberant animal life. As an example of Boyd’s devotion to Rembrandt, the portrait of Betty Burstall is not alone in this exhibition – at least from the late 1940s, Rembrandt was the inspiration for much of Boyd’s portraiture in which heads are vigorously modelled out of a dark background. The series of 1940s portraits is brought to a close with two paintings of 1949—50 – one a depiction of defiant (or simply bored) childhood in the portrait of the artist’s daughter Polly; the other of old age, in the portrait of Robert Lindsay. In his major monograph on Arthur Boyd, published in 1967, Franz Philipp recorded thirty portraits painted between 1945 and 1950. Philipp entitled his brief discussion of Boyd’s sustained phase of portrait painting ‘an interlude’.

There was, however, a later burst of portrait painting in Boyd’s career – in London in 1961—66, when he painted at least a further twelve portraits. Again, these paintings took their subjects either from the immediate family or from the artist’s intellectual circle: the actor and director Peter O’Shaughnessy (also the subject of a drawing in his classic role in Gogol’s Diary of a Madman); the publisher Tom Rosenthal; and the philosopher Cameron Jackson. Boyd only occasionally painted portraits on request or as commissions, and the results were not always successful; he needed friendship, rapport or intimacy as a precondition. His long-standing close relationships with Anne Purves of Australian Galleries, and the dealer and discriminating collector, Joseph Brown, led to two remarkable serial portraits – themes and variations – which collectively express the sitters’ personalities and mood. The penultimate painting in the exhibition, of the great historian Manning Clark, is one of Boyd’s most poignant and heart-felt portraits. It is a gentle painting, simple and friendly – a man at ease, his dog, a creamy strip of beach and a patch of sunlit bush.

Above the artist’s signature and the painting’s date are the words of friendship, ‘for Manning’. The work was painted during Boyd’s six-month residency in Canberra in 1971—72 as the Australian National University’s Creative Arts Fellow. During that time the Boyds visited Manning and Dymphna Clark at their bush retreat at Wapengo on the New South Wales south coast. In the portrait of Manning Clark, the figure merges with the landscape, even to the sky-blue and yellow-ochre of his clothes. This is as Australian a portrait as Figure on a chair (painted later in the same year in England) is an English portrait. Like the Rembrandt-inspired portraits of Boyd’s early maturity in the 1940s, Figure on a chair is a painting created with full consciousness of all the European traditions of figure painting.

Andrew Sayers Works by Arthur Boyd :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW Art Gallery of New South Wales Art Gallery Rd, The Domain 2000 Sydney, Australia Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– | australia.gov.au Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– Brett Whiteley Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan, Hurstbridge, c. 1968, photographer Barbara Tucker, gelatin silver. © Barbara Tucker. Image courtesy of Barbara Tucker and the National Library Australia. Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester are considered to be the major figures of a modernist movement in Australian art, based in Melbourne, which has determined and shaped Australian contemporary art. They were known as the Angry Penguins painters, and were part of the broader Angry Penguins movement that also included Max Harris and John Perceval, among others.

The aim of the group was to modernise Australian creative arts and poetry, and challenge traditions they saw as restrictive in Australia in the 1940s. Contemporary movements in Europe, such as surrealism and French symbolism influenced the Angry Penguins. These movements were seen as vital by the Angry Penguin painters to modernise the contemporary Australian art scene and also to inspire Australian artists in finding different and more relevant modes of expression. Consequently, the Angry Penguins adopted a spontaneous and visionary approach to their creative process. Nolan, for example, was a fast and prolific painter, working without preliminary sketches, often painting from memory. The symbolic surrealism in the works by Nolan, Boyd, Hester and Tucker added a new and exciting dimension to a somewhat stagnant Australian art scene. They shared a meeting place with other artists and writers at the home of the wealthy art patrons, John and Sunday Reed, Heide, just outside Melbourne, now Heide Museum of Modern Art. Arthur Boyd Nude with beast III, 1962, Arthur Boyd, oil on composition board. Felton Bequest, 1966. Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust.

Arthur Boyd (1920–1999) is recognised as a master painter, potter and graphic artist, nationally and internationally. Born in Melbourne, Arthur Boyd was a member of one of the most remarkable artistic dynasties of Australian art history – son of the potter, sculptor and painter, Merric Boyd and painter Doris Gough, and brother of David and Guy. Boyd was conscripted into the Australian Army during World War II where he met John Perceval. Perceval later married Boyd’s sister Mary. In 1944 Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd and Peter Herbst established a pottery workshop at Murrumbeena and turned their energy to ceramic work, creating a series of angel figures, before returning to painting from 1955. Boyd lived in England from 1959 to 1968 and then returned to Australia. In 1972, he bought the property, Bundanon, on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales. His spirited imagination infused both the physical and spiritual landscape of Australia with beautiful and haunting insight.

With the purchase ...[of Bundanon] ...came one of the most sustained forms of inspiration to Arthur Boyd's work. It was here that Arthur Boyd painted some of his most enduring studies of the Shoalhaven River and the Australian bush. Eva Breuer He gave Bundanon to the Australian people in March 1993 as a refuge for artists and musicians. Arthur Boyd was Australian of the Year in 1995. An education centre was opened at Bundanon in 1999 and it is still run by the Bundanon Trust for artists and arts education. Sidney Nolan Kelly and horse, 1946, Sidney Nolan, enamel on composition board. Image courtesy of the Nolan Gallery. As an artist, Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) is best known for his depictions of the Australian outback, and for his historical paintings 'well known for dramatic shifts between dark, moody themes and bright uplifting creations' (Eva Breuer). In 1946 he began a series of paintings on the theme of the bushranger Ned Kelly and other historical figures such as Eliza Fraser and Burke and Wills.

Nolan is attributed with giving the Australian stories of exploration and other 'legends of failure', including Gallipoli, a timeless and definitive quality. Nolan was born in Melbourne and studied intermittently at art school. During the Second World War he was conscripted and served at Dimboola in the Wimmera District of Victoria from 1942–45. Sidney Nolan rejected the academic traditions of his short art training. Instead, his main influence was the radical poetry by the poets Rimbaud and Rilke. This love of literature is seen as visually evident in Nolan's work. Other key influences were modernist artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Henri Rousseau. Locally the arrival of the Russian artist Danila Vassilieff in Melbourne, with his simple and direct art, was significant for Nolan. His long immersion in radical modernism ..., has paid dividends in the development of an individual perception of a very high order and in the steady growth of a rare lyrical talent, maturing in his Nhill and Dimboola landscapes. Here...

we glimpse for the first time since Roberts, McCubbin and the early Streeton, the return of an authentic national vision on a higher and more independent level. Albert Tucker, Angry Penguins, no. 5, 1943. Nolan spent his final years in London where, in addition to painting, he illustrated books and designed sets for the ballet and opera. Sidney Nolan is held by many to be Australia's most internationally famous artist and is referred to as one of the major Western artists of the twentieth century. Much of his work is on display in the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1974, Nolan donated 24 of his works to the Australian public, held as the Nolan Gallery's Foundation Collection at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. Albert Tucker Victory Girls, 1943, Albert Tucker, oil on cardboard. Image courtesy of Barbara Tucker and the Australian National Gallery. Albert Tucker (1914–1999) is considered to be a key figure in modern Australian art although many people find his works unsettling. Tucker depicted the darker side of life – showing fear, trauma, anxiety and struggle in his paintings.

He often worked with paints he had made himself, always experimenting with paints and ideas – including those of the surrealist artists. Unable to afford to attend art school, Tucker was largely self-taught as well as learning from other artists including the Angry Penguins. In the late 1930s, his works were seen by Sunday and John Reed and he began his involvement with the painters Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd at the Reed's Heide homestead. This group included fellow artist Joy Hester, who became his wife. Tucker came to the notice of Melbourne art critics in the 1940s. During the Second World War, Tucker worked sketching wounds for a medical team. On his return to Melbourne, he painted a series of works depicting a city without any moral conscience. After separating from Hester, Tucker spent time in England and Europe, from 1947 till 1958. This stay gave rise to a fresh new series of 'monstrous prostitutes and troubled religious paintings'. After arriving in New York in 1958 the subject of his works changed from city to outback.

In contrast to the works of Sidney Nolan and Russel Drysdale, which Tucker rejected as nationalistic landscape paintings, Tucker depicted the outback as completely inhospitable. The work Burke and Wills from this series was the second of his works to be included in the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1960, Tucker received the Kurt Geiger Award from the Museum of Modern Art, Australia, that payed for him to return to Australia for a retrospective of his work. Joy Hester Woman with Harmonica, c 1941, Joy Hester, brush, ink and pencil on paper. Joy Hester. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007. Joy Hester (1920–1960) was part of the group of painters who joined the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne during the late 1930s. There she met and married the artist Albert Tucker and soon left art school. Mixing with artists such as Albert Tucker, Danilla Vasillieff and Noel Counihan, Joy learned to paint in a way she would never learn at school. Sunday Reed, the art patron, became Joy's closest friend.

At the age of 27 she was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease and subsequently left Tucker, and embarked on a relationship with the artist Gray Smith. During her lifetime, Hester had only three exhibitions and sold very little. Joy Hester's work is celebrated today for its freedom of expression and its ability to translate emotions into pictures....Hester's practice is vigorous in style, often exploring her subconscious mind.... These depictions of inner conflict are raw and often filled with a quiet sorrow. Michael Reid, August 2005. Joy Hester's work is displayed in galleries throughout Australia. In her book Leave no Space for Yearning, Kelly Gellatly describes Hester as a modernist, one of the few who defined the arts scene in the 1940s. Useful links Arthur Boyd on ArtStack - art online Australian of the Year (1995) Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd AC OBE (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, and many canvases feature both.

Several famous works set Biblical stories against the Australian landscape, such as The Expulsion (1947–48), [1] now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . Having a strong social conscience, Boyd's work deals with humanitarian issues and universal themes of love, loss and shame. [2] Boyd was a member of the Antipodeans , a group of Melbourne painters that also included Clifton Pugh , David Boyd , John Brack , Robert Dickerson , John Perceval and Charles Blackman . The Boyd family artistic dynasty includes painters , sculptors , architects and other arts professionals, commencing with Boyd's grandfather Arthur Merric Boyd , Boyd's father Merric and mother Doris , uncles Penleigh Boyd and Martin Boyd , and brothers Guy and David. Mary Boyd, his sister and also a painter, married first John Perceval , and then later Sidney Nolan , both artists. Boyd's wife, Yvonne Boyd ( née Lennie) is also a painter; as are their children Jamie, Polly, and Lucy.

In 1993, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd gave family properties comprising 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River to the people of Australia. Held in trust, Boyd later donated further property, artwork, and the copyright to all of his work. Contents 10 External links Early years and background[ edit ] A tapestry which is a greatly enlarged version of Boyd's original painting. It is one of the world's largest tapestries and hangs in the Great Hall of the Australian Parliament House . Boyd was born at Murrumbeena , Victoria into the artistic dynasty Boyd family , the son of Merric Boyd and his wife Doris , both potters and painters. Both of Boyd's elder brothers were artists; David was a painter, and Guy a sculptor. After leaving school aged 14 years, Boyd briefly attended night classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne where Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner introduced Boyd to writers such as Dostoyevsky and Kafka [2] and influenced his humanitarian values and social conscience.

Boyd later spent several years living on the Mornington Peninsula with his grandfather, the landscape painter Arthur Merric Boyd , who nurtured his talent. [3] Early paintings were portraits and of seascapes of Port Phillip created while he was an adolescent, living in the suburbs of Melbourne. He moved to the inner city where he was influenced by his contact with European refugees. Reflecting this move in the late 1930s, his work moved into a distinct period of depictions of fanciful characters in urban settings.[ citation needed ] Boyd was conscripted in 1941 and served with the Cartographic Unit until 1944. Although he did not see active duty, Boyd's expressionistic wartime paintings, including images of cripples and those deemed unfit for war service, were considered painful images of the dispossessed and the outcast. [3] [4] Career[ edit ] Following the war, Boyd, together with John Perceval founded a workshop at Murrumbeena and turned his hand to pottery, ceramic painting and sculpture.

Boyd was keen to stand apart from the modernist Heide Circle founded by art patrons John and Sunday Reed who supported Albert Tucker , Sidney Nolan , and Joy Hester amongst others; considered by Boyd as an emotional hothouse. [3] In the 1940s he became an active member of the Angry Penguins artistic and literary group. The aim of Angry Penguins was to challenge the conventions of art making in Australia and introduce a radical modernism that represented a new language of painting in Australia. [5] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Boyd traveled to Victoria's Wimmera country and to Central Australia including Alice Springs and his work turned towards landscape paintings. During this period, perhaps his best-known work comes from his Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste Bride series of 31 paintings, also known as The Bride, that imagined an Aboriginal person of mixed descent as a neglected outsider. [2] First exhibited in Melbourne in April 1958, the series met a mixed reaction, as it did later that year in Adelaide and Sydney .

[6] Following the 1999 acquisition of Reflected Bride 1 by the National Gallery of Australia , the gallery's director Brian Kennedy commented in 2002: [6] The Bride paintings are among the greatest expressions of conscience by an Australian artist. Brilliantly executed and of sustained quality, Reflected Bride 1 speaks to contemporary Australia, beseeching reconciliation, understanding and a tolerant, compassionate meeting of old and new cultures. Boyd’s paintings are not pretty, however, and carry a pervasive magical and somewhat menacing atmosphere. It is as if the figures and the landscape are one. The bride rises from the stream, an Ophelia caught by a groom whose foot hooks a tree. The bride is staring at an absurd mask-like white bride’s head which appears to glow out of the forest. This is a surreal wilderness, a strange place of nightmarish dreams. In 1958, one of Boyd's sculptures was installed within the grounds of the Melbourne Olympic Swimming Pool . Relocate to Europe[ edit ] Boyd represented Australia with Arthur Streeton at the Venice Biennale in 1958, where his Bride series was well received.

[7] He was affiliated with the Antipodeans , a group of painters founded in 1959 and supported by Australian art historian Bernard Smith , who tried to promote figurative art when abstract painting and sculpture was dominant. The group exhibited at the Whitechapel gallery in London. [2] In 1959 Boyd and his family moved to London, where he remained until 1971. [2] In London, he started receiving commissions for ballet and opera set designs, and, after taking up etching and returning to ceramic painting, in 1966 he began the Nebuchadnezzar [8] series in response to the Vietnam War [3] as a statement of the human condition . While in London, Boyd entered another distinct period with his works themed around the idea of metamorphosis . He produced several series of works, including a collection of fifteen biblical paintings based on the teaching of his mother, Doris. Later he produced a tempera series about large areas of sky and land , called the Wimmera series.

Return to Australia[ edit ] A recurring motif in Arthur Boyd's paintings, the outstretched arms of the central figure, is predominant in Clifton Pugh 's mural in the bar of the Family Hotel, Tibooburra . The borrowed effect of the mural is, in the main, found in the work of Norman Lindsay . 1976 The recipient of a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Australian National University , in 1971 Boyd and his family returned to Australia as one of Australia's most highly regarded artists. In 1975, Boyd donated several thousand works including pastels, sculptures, ceramics, etchings, tapestries, paintings and drawings to the National Gallery of Australia. [3] [6] In 1978, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd purchased properties and settled permanently at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River . The following year, ABC TV and BBC TV co-produced the television documentary film , A Man of Two Worlds, based on Boyd's life and work. [9] During the latter part of Boyd's painting career, his landscape works were based on the Shoalhaven River.

[3] At first encounter, Boyd was a little overwhelmed to paint the area; he found the scenery rugged and wild, vastly different from the landscapes he knew. But over the years, painting scenes of the Shoalhaven River and the surrounding bushland, he befriended the formidable landscape. This resulted in a significant series of paintings that are not simply landscapes but rather, a fusion of Boyd's European and Australian backgrounds. [5] "His Australian scapegoat [10] paintings of the 1980s explored constructions of Australian identity in the lead up to the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988. With their violent imagery and aggressive colouring they draw on archetypes of Australian military history to suggest the futility of war. In addition to painting, Boyd worked prolifically in ceramics, designed sets for the theatre, and provided illustrations for the poems of Australian poet Peter Porter ." [2] Boyd donated a villa in Tuscany to the Australia Council for an artist-in-residence program in 1982.

In 1984, he was commissioned to design a tapestry based on the painting Untitled (Shoalhaven Landscape) for the Great Hall at the new Parliament House in Canberra . The work is one of the world's largest tapestries . Yet Boyd could not find the strength to fight for the retention of the lower rectangle ablated by the building consultants. This tapestry was produced in the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne. [11] He also produced sixteen canvasses for the foyer of the Victorian Arts Centre in the same year. Boyd again represented Australia at the 1988 Venice Biennale with eight major works; and at the 2000 Venice Biennale. Boyd was commissioned to paint Earth and Fire for the cover of the 28 November 1988 Time magazine special issue dealing with environmental conservation in Australia. Final years[ edit ] In 1993 the Australian Government accepted the gift of Bundanon, valued at the time at A$20 million. The 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) property owned by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd was given to the people of Australia.

Located approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) west of Nowra , the gift was entrusted to the Bundanon Trust, along with further gifts by Boyd, including copyright of all of his artwork, and several thousand works of art from five generations of Boyds, and other Australian artists. These properties provide an environment that promotes visual arts, writing, music and other performing arts, and the promotion of education and research in the arts. [12] A major retrospective of Boyd’s work was exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1993. [2] [13] In 1997 for the first time Boyd exhibited together with the six members of his artistic dynasty under one roof; with brothers David and Guy, son Jamie, and nieces Lenore and Tessa Perceval. The exhibition entitled the Best of Boyd comprised 80 paintings and 40 bronze sculptures. The exhibition was held in Galeria Aniela Fine Art Gallery and Sculpture Park, NSW. Documentary reviews were shown on the ABC TV Australian National News, 18 May 1997 and the ABC TV Sunday Afternoon, June 1997.

Boyd returned to Melbourne to die, aged 78 years in 1999, survived by his wife Yvonne, their son Jamie, and daughters Polly and Lucy, leaving the immensity of the intrinsically Melbourne work of the Boyd family in its strange place, isolated and alone in New South Wales . Mrs Boyd has since died. While the Boyd family and its circle of friends over five generations has no place of prestigious pilgrimage in Melbourne for people who hold a fascination for this family, its roots being in Melbourne, those who hold a fascination for the Reeds and their circle can enjoy the heightened experience of their visit to the Heide Museum of Modern Art , while those who might be intrigued by the Eltham group surrounding the local dynasty founded by Justus Jorgensen might push their capacity for visiting heritage to approach the colony of Montsalvat . Neither the Federal minister for the Arts nor the State Minister for the Arts fortunately has been asked to consider the hypothetical question whether with the Boyd estate placed within its borders, the tiny State south of the Murray River would have an embarrassment of riches far beyond the threshold of modesty. Technique[ edit ] Boyd was a master at manipulating elements to express himself.

He developed new techniques when he was still a teenager and later changed technique depending on his preferred style, media, location and what he was depicting.[ citation needed ] He would often use loose strokes of thickly coated brushes. He applied paint with his fingers and palm because it is quicker, while the body contact directly connected him with the painting. He believed this allowed for a greater sense of freedom and pleasure from the act of painting.[ citation needed ] Honours[ edit ] Boyd is appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1970 for services to art. [14] On 26 January 1979, Boyd was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for service to the visual arts. [15] In recognition of his service to the visual arts and to the development of Australian artists and crafts people, Boyd was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia on 8 June 1992. [16] In 1995, the Prime Minister announced Boyd as Australian of the Year for his contribution to Australian art and his generosity to the Australian people.

[17] Australia Post honoured Boyd in 1998 with a series of postage stamps produced with his photo and examples of his work. [18] [19] Notable sales of works[ edit ] 2000: Dreaming Bridegroom I (1957) sold for A$957,000. 2000: Mourning Bride I (1958) sold for A$833,000. 2011: Frightened Bridegroom (1958) sold for A$1.2 million. [20] 2012: Dry Creek Bed, Alice Springs (1953–54) sold for A$1.2 million. [20] 2012: Bride Running Away (1957) sold for A$1.68 million, setting a new record for a Boyd work. [20] [21] Boyd's subjects were often mythical, realistic, malformed people and monsters, depicting a tragic drama.

[22] Creek near Rosebud, 1937 Moses leading the People, 1957 Lovers with a Bluebird, 1962 Figure supporting Back Legs, 1973 Riversdale Bushland, 1976 Flood receding one Winter Evening, 1981 Bathers Pulpit Rock, 1985 Biography - Arthur Merric Boyd - Australian Dictionary of Biography Australian Dictionary of Biography Tip: searches only the name field Tip: Use double quotes to search for a phrase This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography , Volume 7, (MUP), 1979 This is a shared entry with: Theodore Penleigh Boyd Arthur Merric Boyd (1862-1940), artist, was the father of William Merric Boyd (1888-1959), potter, and Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890-1923), artist.

Arthur Merric was born on 19 March 1862 at Opoho, New Zealand, son of Captain John Theodore Thomas Boyd, formerly of County Mayo, Ireland, and his wife Lucy Charlotte, daughter of Dr Robert Martin of Heidelberg, Victoria. The Boyds came to Melbourne in the mid 1870s and on 14 January 1886 Arthur married Emma Minnie à Beckett, artist; they settled at Brighton. In 1890 they left for England to live at the à Beckett seat, Penleigh House, near Westbury, Wiltshire. They both exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891 after which they moved briefly to Paris. On their return to Melbourne in 1894 they lived at Sandringham. In 1898 their works were included in the Exhibition of Australian Art in London at the Grafton Galleries. The family travelled overseas from time to time, and spent summers in Tasmania where the scenery inspired some of Boyd's best work; he exhibited regularly with the Victorian Artists' Society. At some time Boyd had studied to become an engineer but he did not practise.

He was an artist of charm and ability, who painted best in water-colour, without reaching the heights of his contemporaries in the Heidelberg school. While he was friendly with Frederick McCubbin and E. Phillips Fox , he did not associate much with other artists. According to his son Martin (1893-1972), the novelist, he was, if a little remote, just and generous, with a tolerant and enlightened way of bringing up children. His wife Emma Minnie (1858-1936) was born on 23 November 1858 at Collingwood, second daughter of William Arthur à Beckett and his wife Emma, née Mills. Many critics believe her work to be superior to her husband's. She, too, painted landscapes in Tasmania and many seascapes, but she had a particular talent for genre. At their farm at Yarra Glen she painted the four seasons in a frieze around the dining-room. She was lively, handsome, cultivated and compassionate. Restless, she had something of the religious mystic in her make-up.

After her death at Sandringham on 13 September 1936, her husband lived at Rosebud where he was joined by his grandson Arthur, to whom he gave painting lessons. Boyd died at Murrumbeena on 30 July 1940, survived by two sons and a daughter. His son William Merric, known as Merric, was born on 24 June 1888 at St Kilda, and attended Haileybury College and Dookie Agricultural College. Unsuccessful as a farmer at Yarra Glen, at one time he considered entering the Church of England ministry; he was the model for 'a difficult young man' in Martin Boyd's novel under that title. However, in 1908 at Archibald McNair's Burnley Pottery, he successfully threw his first pot. His parents helped to provide a workshop for him at Murrumbeena and pottery kilns were established there in 1911 (destroyed by fire in 1926). Merric studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School under L. Bernard Hall and McCubbin.

He held his first exhibition of stoneware in Melbourne in 1912 and a second exhibition soon afterwards, and was employed by Hans Fyansch of the Australian Porcelain Works, Yarraville. On 12 October 1915 he married Doris Lucy Eleanor Bloomfield Gough, a fellow student and potter. In May 1917 he joined the Australian Flying Corps but was discharged later in England. Before his return to Australia in September 1919 he undertook training in pottery technique at Wedgwood's, Stoke-on-Trent. Merric produced his best works in the 1920s and 1930s. These were mostly pieces for domestic use, often decorated by Doris, and some pottery sculptures. He believed that 'the first impulse of the maker of hand-pottery is to obtain pleasure in making and decorating an article, and making that pleasure intelligible … the use of our own fauna and flora is of the first importance'. In spite of his aversion to creating art that would sell well, he worked hard to provide for his growing family. In the 1930s he was employed at the Australian Porcelain Co.

Pty Ltd, Yarraville, in the manufacture of Cruffel art porcelain; he earned £4 a week. Doris worked there also on a half-time basis. In his later years Merric became something of a recluse. He had adopted his wife's faith in Christian Science and from the 1930s read little beyond its teachings and the Bible. Subject to epileptic fits, he died at Murrumbeena on 9 September 1959. Doris died on 13 June 1960. They were survived by their five children, all noted artists: Lucy, Arthur, Guy , David and Mary. Merric had considerable influence on younger artists. 682 of his drawings were collected and published by Christopher Tadgell as Merric Boyd Drawings (London, 1975). His portrait by his son-in-law John Perceval is one of several. Theodore Penleigh was born on 15 August 1890 at Penleigh House, Wiltshire, and was educated at Haileybury College and The Hutchins School, Hobart.

He studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School (1905-09) and in his final year exhibited at the Victorian Artists' Society. He arrived in London in 1911 and his 'Springtime' was soon hung at the Royal Academy. He occupied studios at Chelsea, Amersham and St Ives, but for a time made Paris his headquarters. There his studio adjoined that of Phillips Fox who brought him into contact with the French modern school and through whom he met Edith Susan Gerard Anderson; they were married in Paris on 15 October 1912. After touring France and Italy, the couple returned to Melbourne. In 1913 Boyd held an exhibition and won second prize in the Federal capital site competition; he also won the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1914. In October he exhibited at the Athenaeum Hall paintings of Venice, Paris, Sydney, Tasmania and Victoria, including some of Warrandyte, where he had built The Robins, a charming attic house set in bushland.

In 1915 Boyd joined the Australian Imperial Force, becoming a sergeant in the Electrical and Mechanical Mining Company, but was badly gassed at Ypres and invalided to England. In 1918 in London he published Salvage, for which he wrote a racy text illustrated with twenty vigorous black and white ink-sketches of army scenes. Later that year he returned to Melbourne and in November held an exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society's gallery. Although he suffered from the effects of gas, he held one-man shows in 1920, 1921 and 1922; his work, both water-colours and oils, sold quickly. In September 1922 he visited England to choose a collection of contemporary European art for a government-sponsored exhibition to Australia. On 28 November 1923 Penleigh Boyd was killed instantly when the car he was driving to Sydney overturned near Warragul; he was buried in Brighton cemetery. Next March, Decoration Co. auctioned most of his remaining work, including some of his finest paintings, without reserve.

In his short career Penleigh Boyd was recognized as one of Australia's finest landscape painters, with a strong sense of colour controlled by smooth and subtle tones. 'Wattle Blossoms', hung at the Royal Academy in 1923, was much admired. He loved colour, having been influenced early by study of Turner and the example of McCubbin. His wife Edith Susan (1880-1961), was born on 16 February 1880 in Brisbane, daughter of John Gerard Anderson , head of the Department of Public Instruction, and his wife Edith Sarah, née Wood. She studied at the Slade School, London, and in Paris with Phillips Fox. After her marriage she continued to paint and excelled in drawing. In later years she wrote several dramas, staged by repertory companies, and radio plays for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in which she took part. She died at East Burwood on 31 March 1961, survived by her two sons, of whom Robin Gerard Penleigh (1919-1971) was a distinguished architect and writer.

She may be recognized as the beautiful red-haired woman in several of Phillips Fox's paintings; three of his portraits of her are held by the family. Select Bibliography T. P. Boyd, The Landscapes of Penleigh Boyd (Melb, 1920) K. Hood, Pottery (Melb, 1961) Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1960 (Melb, 1962) J. Reed, Australian Landscape Painting (Melb, 1965) M.

Boyd, Day of My Delight (Melb, 1965) Modern Art News (Melbourne), 1 (1959), no 2 Pottery in Australia, 14 (1975), no 2 Home, 1 Dec 1921 Australian Women's Weekly (Sydney), 26 Apr 1972 Herald (Melbourne), 30 Oct 1920, 9 Sept 1959 Times (London) Age (Melbourne), 4 Feb 1933, 10 Sept 1959, 3 Apr 1961, 1 Feb 1975 P. Nase, Martin Boyd's Langton Novels: An Interpretative Essay (M.A. thesis, Australian National University, 1969) M. Boyd, Boyd-à Beckett Family Tree and Associated Papers (State Library of Victoria) Doulton Insulators Australia Pty Ltd Archives (Yarraville, Victoria) private information. Arthur Boyd :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW Art Set Biography Arthur Boyd was a painter, potter and printmaker from a family of artists.

Boyd aimed to convey an inner emotional vision through his work, rather than describing the external world. He painted lyrical and emotive allegories on universal themes of love, loss and shame, often located in the Australian bush. These artworks draw on a wealth of literary and mythological sources as well as intensely personal and often ambiguous symbolism. Boyd had a strong social conscience and his paintings engage deeply with humanitarian issues. Boyd attended night classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1935 and was taught by his parents, Merric and Doris Boyd at their home in Murrumbeena, Victoria. At age 14 he went to live with and learn from his grandfather, Arthur Merric Boyd, on the Mornington Peninsula. He was influenced by his contact with the Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner, who introduced Boyd to such writers as Dostoyevsky and Kafka. Conscripted into the Cartographic Unit of the army in 1942 during the Second World War, Boyd did not see active service, but the war supplied the subject matter for his paintings of the 1940s, which featured the crippled and wounded in turbulent settings.

After the war he established the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery Workshop at Murrumbeena, with John Perceval and Peter Herbst. In the late 1940s Boyd turned to the Bible as a way of expressing the horror and suffering of war. Paintings such as Nebuchadnezzar on fire falling over a waterfall , 1966-68). In 1971 he returned to Australia, eventually settling at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales where he continued to paint landscapes. His Australian scapegoat paintings of the 1980s explored constructions of Australian identity in the lead up to the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988. With their violent imagery and aggressive colouring they draw on archetypes of Australian military history to suggest the futility of war. In addition to painting, Boyd worked prolifically in ceramics, designed sets for the theatre, and provided illustrations for the poems of Australian poet Peter Porter. In 1993 a major retrospective of Boyd’s work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

In the same year, Arthur and his wife Yvonne gifted their property Bundanon, comprising of 1,100 hectares, to the Australian people. Works Arthur Boyd - 必应 Sign in Arthur Boyd Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd AC OBE (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, and many canvases feature both. Several famous works set Biblical stories against the Australian landscape, such as The Expulsion (1947–48), now at Art Gallery of New South Wales. Boyd was a member of the Antipodeans, a group of Melbourne painters that also included Clifton Pugh, David Boyd, John Brack, Robe ... (展开) rt Dickerson, John Perceval and Charles Blackman. The Boyd family artistic dynasty includes painters, sculptors, architects and other arts professionals, commencing with Boyd's grandfather Arthur Merric Boyd, Boyd's father Merric and mother Doris, uncles Penleigh Boyd and Martin Boyd, and brothers Guy and David.

Mary Boyd, his sister and also a painter, married first John Perceval, and then later Sidney Nolan, both artists. Boyd's wife, Yvonne Boyd (née Lennie) is also a painter; as are their children Jamie, Polly, and Lucy. In 1993, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd gave family properties comprising 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River to the people of Australia . Held in trust, Boyd later donated further property, artwork, and the copyright to all of his work. Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd AC OBE (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from ... By Janet McKenzie · 224 pages Arthur Boyd is unquestionably among the greatest painters to have emerged from Australia in the 20th century.

Beautiful and often filled with alienated, haunting figures, Boyd… book.douban.com/subject/3995710 Arthur Boyd Embracing figures before factory with smoking chimney (1968-1969) 375.1993. Arthur Boyd Serpenting figure with feathers and insects (1968-1969) ... Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) was part of a unique artistic family. Across many generations the Boyds include painters, sculptors, architects and other arts professionals ... View the profiles of professionals named Arthur Boyd on LinkedIn. There are 51 professionals named Arthur Boyd, who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, … The Boyd family :: Bundanon Trust The Boyd Family Australia's most remarkable artistic dynasty The Boyd Family Footprints: Social History Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) was part of a unique artistic family. Across many generations the Boyds include painters, sculptors, architects and other arts professionals, commencing with Boyd's father Arthur Merric Boyd whose brothers were Penleigh, a landscape artist, and Martin, a writer. His sister was painter Helen Read.

Together with his wife, Doris, they raised noted Australian artists including painters Arthur and David, and sculptor Guy. Subsequent generations of the Boyd family continue to be active in the arts today. Family History a virile tree of eloquent achievers - Barry Pearce, Sydney Morning Herald, 2002 Arthur Boyd's grandparents Emma Minnie (nee a’Beckett) and Arthur Merric Boyd were both accomplished and recognised artists, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London and in various galleries in Melbourne. Arthur Merric was a traditional landscape painter affiliated with the Heidelberg school. They were quite well off, with money inherited from parents and grandparents. They lived a genteel life of travel and art, owned property in the UK and in Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Emma Minnie in particular was socially minded and active in helping the poor. She was very religious, shared bible stories, myths, legends and fairy tales with her children and grandchildren. They had five children, the second being William Merric Boyd (Merric), known as the father of Australian studio pottery. He and his brothers and sisters were encouraged by their parents in the pursuit of art and music, in thinking of others and in helping the poor.

Merric struggled with epilepsy throughout his life but was well loved and cared for by his family. Open Country at Murrumbeena, in Melbourne was built in 1913 to Merric’s design on land purchased by his parents. It was a home, workplace and meeting ground for the Boyd family and many outstanding, creative individuals for thirty years. In 1915 Merric married Doris Gough, a quietly strong and determined woman, already a painter she became wife, mother and business manager. Merric and Doris had five children: Lucy, Arthur, Guy, David and Mary. Visitors to Open Country included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Yosl Bergner, John Perceval and many others. Merric’s parents, Emma Minnie and Arthur Merric Boyd and younger sister Helen, lived next door during the years of World War I and on the other side Doris’ mother built a house she called Green Pastures. When Arthur Boyd and Yvonne Lennie married in 1945 they lived at Open Country, and Arthur’s first studio was built in the rambling garden from a modernist design by his cousin Robin Boyd.

With their respective partners Arthur’s siblings, Lucy, Guy, David and Mary Boyd also lived at Open Country during the 1940s and 50s. There were visits to Martin Boyd at The Grange (the a’Beckett family home) where the more genteel aspects of the Boyd and a’Beckett heritage prevailed. Arthur and Yvonne Boyd lived at The Grange for a time in 1948-49 as did Mary (nee Boyd) and John Perceval in 1951. In late 1959 Arthur, Yvonne and their children went to London. Within six months Arthur’s work was receiving great acclaim and being exhibited in major galleries. Over the next ten years the Boyd’s travelled frequently between the UK and Australia. Arthur Boyd Explore this timeline which illustrates the decades of Arthur Boyd's life, using photographs and letters from the Bundanon Trust Archive and artworks from the collection.

Question: What was the nationality of the painter Arthur Boyd?
Answer: AUSTRALIAN